“I'm not grasping,” he returned. “She does very well for me as she
is. Now,” he turned again to the child, who rejoiced in the recovered
twinkle in his eyes, “you have my full permission to convert the error
fairy.”
“Hush, hush!” ejaculated Jewel, alarmed. “We mustn't hold that law over
her.”
Dr. Ballard laughed.
“Convert her, I say. Let us see what she would be like if she were twice
as nice. She's a very charming woman now, your aunt Madge. If she were
twice as nice--who knows? The fairy might spread wings and float away!”
They had entered the park and Jewel suddenly noted their surroundings.
“We're coming to the Ravine of Happiness,” she said.
“That's the way it's been looking to me ever since last evening,”
responded her companion meditatively.
The child paid no attention to his words. She was watching eagerly for
the bend in the road beside which the gorge lay steepest.
“There!” she said at last, resting her hand on that of her companion.
Obediently the doctor stopped his horse. The park was still but for
the bird notes, the laughter and babble of the brook far below, and the
rustle of the fresh leaves, each one a transparency for a sunbeam.
The two were silent for a minute, Jewel's radiant eyes seeking the
pensive ones of her companion.
“Do you hear?” she asked softly at last.
“What?” he returned.
“It is cousin Eloise's Spring Song.”
The doctor's words and looks remained in Jewel's mind after she reached
home that day. She mused concerning him while she was taking off Anna
Belle's hat and jacket up in her own room.
“I don't suppose you could understand much what he meant, dearie,” she
said, her face very sober from stress of thought, “but I did. If I'd
been as big as mother I could have helped him; but I knew I was too
little, and when people don't understand, mother says it is so easy to
make mistakes in what you say to them.”
Anna Belle's silence gave assent, and her sweet expression was always
a solace to Jewel, who kissed the hard roses in her cheeks repeatedly
before she sat her in the big chair by the window and went down to
lunch. Anna Belle's forced abstemiousness had ceased to afflict her.
At the lunch table she gave a vivacious account of the morning's
diversions, and for once Mrs. Evringham listened to what she said,
a curious expression on her face. This lady had expected to endure
annoyance with this child on her grandfather's account; but for unkind
fate to cause Jewel to be a hindrance and a marplot in the case of Dr.
Ballard was adding insult to injury.
The child, suddenly catching the expression of Mrs. Evringham's eyes as
they rested upon her, was startled, and ceased talking.
“Aunt Madge does love me,” she declared mentally. “God's children love
one another every minute, every minute.”
“So Mr. Reeves told you where you can go to church,” said Eloise,
replying to Jewel's last bit of information.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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